


Dad

by Pic_Akai



Series: Dad 'verse [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-07
Updated: 2012-01-07
Packaged: 2017-10-29 04:01:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/315574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pic_Akai/pseuds/Pic_Akai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock doesn't often call Lestrade 'dad'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dad

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first written piece in the Dad 'verse.

To say John was surprised was an understatement. Then again, he wasn't the only one. Sherlock hadn't known he was going to say it until he did. It wasn't as if either of them had made a conscious decision to keep it from John, but nevertheless, he had never been told.

"Dad?"

John was speaking quietly to Lestrade when he heard this, and first he was more preoccupied with the fact that Sherlock was awake than what he'd said. However, when Lestrade responded to this by taking Sherlock's hand and replying, "I'm here," John's attention was diverted.

"Dad?" John repeated incredulously.

"Don't be tedious, John," Sherlock croaked. "It's not-" He was forced to end the ensuing diatribe earlier than planned, as he began to cough.

"Easy now," Lestrade said, helping Sherlock to sit up. John poured a glass of water from the jug on the bedside table and passed it to Lestrade, as he knew better than to try to give it directly to Sherlock himself. While Lestrade coaxed Sherlock into drinking some of the water, John busied himself with the controls of the bed so that when Sherlock was finished, he could rest easily sitting up.

"How are you feeling?" Lestrade asked as Sherlock settled back into the bed.

"Marvellous, Lestrade," Sherlock replied. "I am at the peak of physical fitness." His voice was still hoarse from the coughing, and Lestrade had the grace to smile a bit sheepishly.

"You've really got to stop jumping into the Thames," John said. Usually his admonishments were a fair bit harsher than this, but he was still rather distracted, watching closely how Lestrade and Sherlock interacted with one another.

Unsurprisingly, Sherlock rolled his eyes. "Nonsense. It was necessary for the case, and as you can see, I'm not much the worse for wear." He ended this sentence with another coughing fit.

"Mmhmm," Lestrade said, clearly unimpressed. "I can see how that man with the head wound and a broken wrist could have got away easily if the idiot who hadn't slept in three days hadn't jumped in after him. After all, it was you that apprehended him, wasn't it? Or was it one of my lot who got there three minutes later, just after you blacked out, and then another one had to go and rescue you?"

Sherlock sniffed. "Perhaps if your officers had arrived when we did-"

"They weren't there because you didn't bloody tell anyone where you were going! You just muttered something about being Irish and legged it."

"John managed to follow me," Sherlock said churlishly.

"No offence, mate-" Lestrade addressed this to John, before turning back to Sherlock, "but John's mental. And besides which, he doesn't have any protocol to follow."

"Is that a polite way of saying that they're idiots, which is why they need me to decode the evidence in the first place? Because if it is, I wouldn't bother. I'm already well aware of their collective stupidity." Sherlock closed his eyes.

Lestrade stood up. "Well, that's my cue to be leaving, now that I know you're not dead." He shoved his hands into his pockets. "Try not to contract TB or something on the way home, yeah?" Nodding at John and saying, "Doctor Watson," he left the room.

John knew that social protocol dictated that he leave this at least until Sherlock was out of the hospital, if not completely well again, but he couldn't bear to. And besides, this was Sherlock - _hang_ social protocol. "Dad?" he said again, trying and failing to keep the corners of his mouth from tugging upwards.

Sherlock sighed loudly and theatrically. "It's like a puppy with a new chew toy," he said.

* * * * *

It was rare that Sherlock referred to Lestrade as 'dad'. Usually it came out only in times of great stress - not that Sherlock would admit that these existed, not in the same way that they did to other people - and, almost always, unbidden. In fact, Sherlock couldn't remember when he'd last used the word, but he knew it hadn't been recently; not since he got clean the last time, anyway. Mycroft could probably tell him the exact time and date, but then Mycroft was like that, weirdly sentimental about things like family.

Weirdly obsessed with his own definition of 'family', too. Mycroft had never called Lestrade 'dad' to his face. It had always been 'Greg' or 'Gregory'. This had never seemed unusual, since Mycroft had been fourteen at the time they first met, and by that time Mycroft's own father had been clearly imprinted upon him as the blueprint for all fathers everywhere. It was a blueprint that Gregory didn't fit. So father was still 'Father', and Gregory was just Gregory, a role all of his own. Except that sometimes, once or twice when the room was very quiet and the brothers were alone, Sherlock had heard Mycroft call him 'dad'. It seemed he'd divorced the meaning of 'father' from 'dad' in his own mind, but he didn't believe the rest of society could do the same, so he kept it to himself.

Mother had remained 'Mummy', and Greg's wife was Laura, at her own insistence as neither of the Holmes brothers seemed inclined to break from their initial habit of calling her 'Mrs Lestrade'. "If you're going to live with us," she'd said, "you can't keep calling me Mrs Lestrade. I'll feel like I'm being spoken to by some sort of official!" They acquiesced, and Mycroft kept this up even once he'd become that sort of official, out of respect.

Except for once a year, when they all went to visit her grave together; then Mycroft called her Mrs Lestrade inside his head, because Greg called her Laura out loud, and then she was his Laura, and she couldn't be anyone else's.

Sherlock knew all this about the way Mycroft's mind worked when it came to family. Some of it had been explained to him but most of it he'd deduced, and yet still very little of it made sense to him. Father was a distant memory, one Sherlock was not too displeased to be moving ever further away from. They had never got on and, judging by Sherlock's current disposition, likely never would have, even if Father had managed to stay alive until Sherlock's eighth birthday.

Mummy was different. He missed her, insofar as he could. Having an eidetic memory was wonderful for facts but didn't work quite so well for emotions; he couldn't be sure if he really felt the same way now about something that had happened when he was four as he had done at the time. Nowadays a bedtime story would be an insult, but then it was a treasure - which feeling was right?

Lestrade hadn't felt like too much of a 'dad' at first. He'd mostly been a damned nuisance, insisting on all sorts of ridiculous rules and habits which Sherlock was sure didn't apply to him, and forever being in the way. Sherlock had called him 'Mr Lestrade' and refused to adopt Greg, but later softened this to 'Lestrade' for most of the time. The strange thing was, as the years wore on and 'dad' as a term became ever less prevalent, Lestrade seemed to feel, to Sherlock, like more of a dad than ever. Maybe it was because he was getting older.

Laura had never been a replacement for a mother. She'd simply been a kind and cheerful person who'd made it her business to educate Sherlock in the social ways of the world as best she could. Like with Lestrade, he'd found her a complete annoyance at first, but she'd ingratiated herself into his life over time, often striking bargains with him or taking the time to explain the long-term benefits of not wearing that particular shirt to go to church, rather than Lestrade's preferred method of simply insisting over and over again that he do so until one of them got fed up with the standoff.

They were both patient in their own ways, though Sherlock could not agree with Mycroft that they were the most patient people he'd ever met or would ever meet. Sherlock responded, the first time Mycroft said this, with the recollection of a documentary in which it was said that some zoologists would spend hours on end sat completely still, just waiting for a glance of a creature, which they might not even be able to document any evidence of.

"Yes," replied Mycroft, "but the Lestrades have met you, many times over, and therein lies the wonder of their patience."

* * * * *

Nothing really changed once John became aware of the slightly more precise nature of Sherlock and Lestrade's relationship - that is to say, it could never be very easily defined, but legally speaking 'foster father' had fit, at least before Sherlock became an adult. The one small difference was that John spent quite a bit more time than before cataloguing the way they interacted with one another: who spoke when, what they discussed, what was left out. Some things made far more sense, and some things far less.

Eventually, Sherlock's frustration with John's new hobby boiled over, whereupon he threw a fit and refused to eat for six days. John responded by trying to cajole him for the first three - they weren't even on a case, so it was unusual - and then, once he'd clocked on that Sherlock was trying to divert his attention, by staying on late at the surgery whenever possible and otherwise going to the pub. Usually he much preferred the comfort of his own living room, and he'd never been a solitary drinker type, but since his living room currently contained a sulking overgrown child, the pub was the better option.

On the sixth day of Sherlock's hunger strike, John had been at the Herald Arms no longer than an hour when Lestrade turned up, dropping wearily onto a stool across the table from him, the glass in his hand already half empty.

"All right?" John greeted him, a little surprised. He turned his body away from the television showing the rugby highlights and towards the other man. "Everything okay?"

Lestrade waved his hand vaguely. "Yeah, everything's fine," he said, then paused and took a drink. John waited. "I gather he's updated you on the situation?"

"If you're referring to the dad thing, yeah," John replied. "You…okay with that?"

"Oh, sure," Lestrade nodded. "It wasn't a secret. He just doesn't mention it often, and - I tend to follow his lead."

John smirked. "Shouldn't it be the other way around?"

Lestrade huffed a laugh. "I suppose so, yeah," he said. "Still, he's been ahead of me since the day I met him - probably since the day he was born, so…"

He trailed off, and they sat in companionable silence for a minute or two. John considered all the questions he had, working through which ones were important, which were urgent and whether any of them were actually really necessary. Probably not, but the curiosity was killing him.

Lestrade seemed to pick up on this. "It's a bit weird, yeah?"

"Well…yeah. Maybe not weird for Sherlock, but generally weird."

"Mm." Lestrade twisted his glass under his hand, watching as the liquid swirled about. "The Yarders don't know," he said. "And that is a deliberate choice, because I can only imagine how much more difficult they'd be if they did. Nepotism rather than just plain favouritism, you know. Never mind how it means he saves people's lives when he works these things out…anyway." He shook his head. "So, just try to keep it quiet with them, eh?"

John nodded quickly. "Of course," he said. "But - it's never come up?"

Lestrade frowned a moment. "I think Sally suspects," he said. "It's not anything we've said, because like I say - we've been very careful. It's just, sometimes she says something or does something that makes me wonder. But she hasn't said anything, and no one else has, so…" He looked at John directly. "I know it comes across like she hates his guts, but she doesn't really. She just…disapproves of his methods. I mean, well, we all do - all of us that are sane, anyway - but I suppose she's just a bit more vocal about it. Honestly though, she respects what he can do."

"He's difficult to tolerate," John said, and they shared a smile at that.

There was another silence while they drank. Lestrade finished his pint and got up, offering John another, which he accepted.

"So what brings you here?" John asked when Lestrade returned, nodding his thanks when a Guinness was placed in front of him. He'd decided to go for bold and obvious. Perhaps living with Sherlock for so long had done some damage to his subtlety circuits.

Lestrade cleared his throat before replying. "I just thought you might have some questions," he said. "It's driving him up the wall, obviously, but he won't sort it out properly by actually answering you - as you know - so I thought I'd give you a chance to ask."

"What's driving him up the wall?"

"You watching us." John had the grace to look a little embarrassed at that, but when he glanced back to Lestrade, the other man didn't seem too bothered. "That's why he's stopped eating."

"I knew that," John said carefully. "I just don't get why he cares. It's not like he's asked me to forget I ever heard it; and in any case, I don't see why he would. Sherlock doesn't care about how he comes across unless it's for a case."

"Well," Lestrade began, and the corner of his mouth tugged up a little, "I wouldn't be too sure about that last bit. He doesn't care how he comes across to _most_ people, yeah. But it's not about that, anyway."

"What?" John was momentarily thrown by the apparent information that Sherlock gave a toss what John thought of him.

Lestrade didn't oblige him any further on that, however, and then it didn't come up again. "He doesn't care that you're watching," Lestrade explained, "just that it's distracting you." John must have looked even more confused, because Lestrade grinned. "He's relying on you to ask questions that make him think, but if you're not paying attention to what's going on, you're not asking the questions."

"So…" John thought about this. "He's annoyed because I'm watching you two instead of, say, asking why the murder weapon was a bread knife and not a carving knife?"

"Exactly."

John sighed. "So, as usual, he's annoyed that I'm not paying attention to him _all the time_. I've got to ask Mrs Hudson for that skull back."

Lestrade laughed.

"How on earth did you end up with him?" John asked a few minutes later, out of a silence. "I mean, he's said that you were fostering, but that's about it."

Lestrade looked as if he'd been waiting for it, entirely unsurprised. "We were," he said, sounding wistful. "That is, my wife and I, Laura." John's mouth hadn't even opened to ask the question before he continued, "She died, seventeen years ago now. Cancer." He continued speaking in the space where most people offered platitudes, and John guessed he had heard enough of them by this point. "Anyway, we'd fostered before them, a little girl and a boy, for about eight months. That's sort of the definition of short-term in fostering, but it wasn't for us. Too hard to hand them back, you see - or, over to someone else. So we moved to long-term, and then we got them. Sherlock-"

"Hang on," John interrupted him, "Them - you fostered Mycroft as well?" His brain protested even the imagination of Mycroft having had anyone like Lestrade for a dad. It was difficult enough to imagine him as anything other than fully grown, impeccably dressed, and twirling that ridiculous umbrella. Logically of course at some point he must have been an infant, and then a child, but _how_ , John couldn't countenance.

Lestrade smiled. "That's not the first time I've had that reaction. Yes, Sherlock was seven and Mycroft was fourteen. Of course, Mycroft didn't need much parenting by that point - probably never has done - but he needed a place to stay and legal guardians, so." Lestrade looked thoughtful. "I like to think we gave him more than that, though.

"Anyway," he shook his head, as if clearing cobwebs, "Their parents had died. A car accident in Russia, of all places. The kids were left with the household staff - yeah, they had staff - but of course, once the parents were gone, there was no one to take up the household. They've got relatives, but they weren't interested. I've only ever met one of them and he was a right bastard." Lestrade paused for a drink, and John was glad of the break, allowing him time for the information to sink in. It was insane and bizarre and so very, very Sherlock, though not at all what he'd expected from Lestrade.

"You're not that much older than Mycroft," John said, considering this.

"Thirteen years," Lestrade shrugged. "He's only thirty seven - I know," he added, at John's raised eyebrows. "I was…twenty six, twenty seven, when they came? Quite young to foster a teenager, but as you can imagine, they were fairly difficult to place. Refused to be separated - Sherlock was quite clear about what he'd do if they tried to separate them, even if he's spent half his life avoiding Mycroft since - and of course, with that kind of intellect…most carers just baulked at the idea. I did, truth be told, at first, but Laura talked me into it. She was cleverer than me by miles. Not a patch on them, still, but - she knew what we were capable of." He frowned. "Dying wasn't part of the plan."

"It never is," John said, uselessly.

"Yeah," Lestrade said, then there was another long pause.

"Anyway," he spoke again, "This isn't so you can treat him differently." He looked John in the eye, serious. "Nor me. It's just for your own knowledge. He'd hate it if this changed things, and I wouldn't thank you either. You're a good man, John, and good for him. He hasn't had a lot of that."

John ducked his head. "It won't change anything," he said, looking up again. "It's just nice to know. Besides," he continued with a grin, "Now if I get really fed up, I can always threaten to tell his dad."

"Don't you bloody dare," Lestrade warned, his face then lapsing into a grin of its own.

**Author's Note:**

> I adore concrit.


End file.
